The research proposal involves the investigation of the primary photochemical events in the visual protein, rhodopsin. Our object is three fold: 1) to establish the sequence of intermediates, particularly the role of hypsorhodopsin, in the photochemical bleaching of rhodopsin, 2) to obtain structural information on the retinal chromophore in each intermediate 3) to obtain data concerning the mechanism of activation of the protein dynamics by the retinal chromophore. Picosecond absorption and picosecond Raman spectroscopy, which are capable of examining the ultrafast molecular dynamics of rhodopsin in the early stages of vision, will be employed to accomplish these objectives.